Friday, April 19, 2013

Page 14 -- II.

‘The last couple weeks, I watched you quite a lot. That’s when I noticed. You were always alone.’ Garovel paused. ‘At school, you almost never speak to any of your classmates. Maybe it’s because you have such trouble communicating. Even here, in your own house, you’re very distant from your parents. I don’t think I ever saw you say more than a few words to them at a time.’

He squinted hard, feeling the sudden tension behind his eyes, trying to keep it away.

‘The reason you waited so long to kill yourself, it was because you were waiting for someone to stop you, wasn’t it?’

He covered his eyes with his hand, as if to make some vain attempt at hiding himself. “But... no one did...”

‘No. No one did.’

The tears were there in full now, streaming down his face, and he couldn’t make them go away, much as he wanted to.

‘And then, after you died, when I asked you if you would help me, you agreed. That was all the confirmation I needed. Because like I said, if you had really wanted to die, then you wouldn’t have said yes to me.’

He tried to say something else, uncertain what, but found his breath too choked to form words.

‘So now you’ve got another chance. And this time, you’ll try to help me, just like I’ll try to help you.’

Hector had snuck out of the house, which he had never done before and was not sure he ever wanted to do again. His room was on the second floor, so he jumped out the window and broke both of his legs, which hurt like hell, he discovered.

The one question I kept wanting Hector to ask is, "Save everyone? Don't you want to discriminate just a bit? I mean, am I supposed to intervene between two blood-thirsty psychos intent on blowing each other away? Besides, death is a necessary part of the circle of life, right?"

Expertly done. All the emotions were there. Everything I suspected bout Hector came into play. And it was all done in a way that didn't beat the reader over the head with the drama. Very nice. It's scenes like this one that make or break a story for me, and you sir just earned a fan. I'll be reading this til the end

You know, unless you do something incredibly wrong (or have a bone weakening disease), jumping out of a second story window won't break either of your legs. The worst that's likely to happen is a twisted ankle. I know because I used to jump from that height into my backyard when I was like 10.